Archive for April, 2014

I’m a nostalgic person. I’m a fervent collector of ticket stubs, old notes and photographs. I like reminiscing because I’m fortunate enough to have so many fond memories to look back on, and I like to marvel at change and the way people grow.
I’m not graduating this semester, and I’m not even at the age for it. I’ve attended Ohio State for three years, but I’m already nostalgic about all the changes that have come and gone in my life, and I don’t think it’s ever too early to reflect on them.
Ohio State, with its people and its opportunities, has impacted my life in too many ways to… Read more

It’s hard to describe the feeling of having only two finals, one paper, one bar crawl and a walk across the field in Ohio Stadium left of my time at Ohio State. It didn’t sink in that I was actually leaving when I applied for graduation or picked up my cap and gown, but here on my last day putting out a newspaper as Editor-in-chief of The Lantern, it is finally starting to feel real.
I’ve dedicated a lot of time during my college career to The Lantern — about 2 1/2 years to be exact. During that time, there have been many sleepless nights, studying for exams I wasn’t… Read more

It’s expected that the people leading an institution with the scope of Ohio State will be well compensated.
What is less expected, though, is that those administrators on average make several times the amount an average faculty member makes, and more than their peers at comparable universities.
Gene Smith formally joined the ranks of those administrators this year.
Smith, OSU’s athletic director, was given the additional title of vice president and granted a four-year contract extension with a pay raise Jan. 28. His contract is now set to expire June 30, 2020, and his base salary is $940,484, up from $840,484 in 2013.
He can now be considered one of… Read more

For one Ohio State student, “Boston Strong” is more than a slogan.
“The T-shirts and the posters and whatnot that say ‘Boston Strong’ on them, to a lot of people those are just the memorial slogan for what occurred, but for us it’s a sign of how close Boston is as a city,” said Taylor Landes, a fourth-year in international studies who is from Boston.
A year ago, Landes said she knew Boston was a strong city, but after being about the length of a football field away from blasts at the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon, she said that mindset was only strengthened.
“Boston has always been… Read more

The Big Free Concert might have been free for students to attend, but the Ohio Union Activities Board had a significant budget to pay for Childish Gambino and his supporting acts. The OUAB budget was just shy of the $2.1 million mark for last year, but exceeded that in 2014.
OUAB was allocated about $2.1 million for fiscal year 2013 (July 1, 2012, through June 30, 2013) while this year, the organization has a budget of $2.15 million.
The organization is funded through the $37.50 student activity fee paid by each student each semester, and 53.2 percent of the total amount amassed through the fee was allotted to OUAB each… Read more

Ohio State seems to be taking the lion’s share of state funding to repair and maintain existing facilities, despite a newly implemented system designed to unify the funding request process.
Maintenance and repair was an approximately $167 million piece of the list of recommended higher education projects totaling $404.5 million in the Ohio Higher Education Funding Commission recommendations for 2015-16.
The money budgeted for maintenance and repair equals roughly the tuition cost of 16,658 in-state undergraduates at Ohio State’s Columbus campus for 2013-14 school year.
The Ohio Higher Education Funding Commission is a collaborative effort of public college and university leaders established by Ohio Gov. John Kasich in 2011 to… Read more

Former Ohio State student Mark Kalina Jr. is planning to complete a 10-12 mile obstacle course called the Tough Mudder in May — less than two years after losing both of his legs in a train accident.
The then-fifth year in civil engineering was walking home by himself from Grandview Heights after a night out with friends in October 2012. As he walked alongside a railroad track, he slipped on gravel and his shirt snagged on a train, which began moving at the same time. Unable to free himself, Kalina pulled himself onto a ladder on the side of the train and held on for as long as he could… Read more

“Final examinations are as inescapable as death and taxes and just as dreaded.”
That’s the beginning of an article published in The Lantern in 1964, but with finals week approaching again, the stress still seemingly exists.
“Finals are awful. They’re kind of just like a marathon, and you’re on the final stretch, so it’s at that point where you can’t give up, so you have to just keep going,” said Nahila Sharif, a second-year in chemical engineering.
And Sharif is not alone, as finals have been the cause of stress for years, according to Lantern archives.
Tom Daniels, an Ohio State graduate student in 1992, said the stress of finals… Read more

Gotham City, Krypton and … Columbus?
Although Ohio’s capital city might not initially seem like a typical comic book setting, a new project is localizing the art of comics and incorporating the spirit of a community into the adventures that fill its pages.
The “Weinland Park Story Book” project is a “hand-illustrated, limited edition publication” that is set to tell the stories of the Weinland Park area, according to the Ohio State Wexner Center for the Arts website.
The book is set to include more than 100 stories and anecdotes collected from residents of Weinland Park, accompanied by illustrations created by children who live in the area, as well as… Read more

The New York-based alternative rock band We Are Scientists is aiming to bring a live experience unlike any other to the Columbus stage. They hope to invoke feelings of a “new love” by creating an intimate, audience-involved show, the likes of which they said are rare in today’s music industry.
Established as a side project to “have a hobby,” We Are Scientists formed in 2000. The current touring group consists of vocalist and guitarist Keith Murray, bassist Chris Cain and percussionist Keith Carne.
“It (the band) certainly was unexpected. In the early days, we absolutely didn’t start the band because we thought it would be a good career idea,” Cain… Read more